The difference between SmartDataCenter and OpenStack mirrors the difference between the expectations for OpenStack and the reality that Randy outlines: where OpenStack is accommodating of many different visions for the cloud, SmartDataCenter is deliberately opinionated.

Fifteen years ago, I initiated a time-honored tradition among my colleagues in kernel development at Sun: shortly after the first of every year, we would get together at our favorite local restaurant to form predictions for the coming year.

While Docker has existed since 2013, 2014 was indisputably the year in which it transcended from an interesting project to a transformative technology—a shift which had profound ramifications for us at Joyent.

Given what I’ve seen the Joyent product and engineering team produce over the past several months (and years), I am confident that we are well on our way to truly becoming the best place to run Docker.

You may have seen that we recently open sourced SmartDataCenter and Manta. Because Joyent pioneered the use of infrastructure containers, you would be forgiven for asking the question: does this mean that SDC somehow competes with Docker?